Category Archives: Musical

The Senior Bugaloo

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: ROTC, student
Residence: Maryland
Performance Date: April 19, 2015
Primary Language: English

So I guess there is one that is always passed down. The rest, each year, every village comes up with their own. All the kids, we uh, you grow up at the camp. And the seniors, sing this cheer, and inadvertently you learn it ‘cus you hear it so many times.

Senior campers are the best,

we party while the others rest

we continue to rock, we continue to roll

because we’ve got spirit and we’ve got soul
all day long we’re hanging around
all night long we’re partying down
senior campers are really cool
we don’t have to go in the pool
Mohawk boys are really lame
Seneca girls always complain
Cayuga cubs you better run
Onondoga girls are no fun
some walk high and some walk low
but senior spirits gonna really something something
with an R U L and a big fat E
gonna rule this camp til we’re CITs
we’re number one,
so we can’t be number 2
now cmon everybody let’s do the senior bugaloo
context of the performance:
I asked the informant, one-on-one, if he had any camp songs that were passed down, knowing how much this camp was a part of his life, and this was the one he immediately thought of. He couldn’t remember it all at first, and had to sort of pause, close his eyes and think a few times, but was very excited when he got it.
thoughts on the performance:
Seniority is a big part of a lot of teams, and apparently this camp as well. The younger campers seem to look up to the older ones and, as the informant, learn their cheer inadvertently, but never speak it until they are of that age. He explained after how the group that cheers this is the oldest group of campers before you can apply to be on the staff.

Childhood Musical Experiences in Rural Tennessee

Nationality: American
Age: 86
Residence: Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Primary Language: English

Childhood Musical Memories in Rural Tennessee:

M.H.: My mother played the piano, and in fact, she won one, one time, from a contest, when she was sixteen years of age. So, she taught us all how to play the piano. Even when I was growing up, we had the piano and an old fashioned pump organ, and everybody in my family played something. My father played a banj–not a banjo, but it’s like a violin.

ME: A fiddle?

M.H.: Yeah, that’s it. And we would have like a hoedown, they called them. Where men would be playing guitars, bass, and fiddles and stuff. That was our entertainment. We made our entertainment. Because we had no electricity, before radio and TV, and that would come many years later. So everyone in my family was able to take lessons from mother, and play the piano, and fiddle. But it just wasn’t my thing. I had to practice in a room that had no fire in the winter time, and those keys are cold, so I didn’t love it. I didn’t succeed, but I had a brother and a sister that could sit down and play anything if they wanted to, you know. And my father was a four-note singer, he was in a quartet that only sung four notes, and he went all over the country in the summer time, for all day singings and stuff like that. But that was very rare, you didn’t have very much singing there outside of church.

ME: At that time, there were much more interactions with others, and that’s how entertainment was.

M.H.: Oh yes, yes, always. ME: Now, many people are entertained by themselves.

M.H.: Radio and TV.

ME: Yes, and computers.

M.H. In fact, let’s see. In 1943, I was a teenager, and I went to work during the war, at a plant called Continental Radio & Television. Now there was no such thing as a television, you heard of it, but nobody could buy one. But this plant where I worked, they had one in the laboratory, experimenting with it, and I got to see it.

 

 

M.H. recalls the type of musical entertainment that she received in the years of her youth on a rural Tennessee farm, which had been her family’s home for a number of generations. They were poor, yet they managed to have a piano, an organ, and sufficient musical practice. Then, the implications of modern entertainment are discussed, such as the mediums of television, computers, and radio. I believe that entertainment nowadays, for many people in the west, has become gradually more isolated over the decades, with each new electronic innovation rooting out previous practices in a number of ways. Then, when the internet finally became popular by the year 2000, entertainment had changed for this modern era. I personally spend much of my time using computers, whether for work or for entertainment, so I am effectively a part of this relatively new system that has been in place for the past fifteen years, and longer for some others. I know that my family had access to the internet with a Windows 95, and then a Windows 98, which I think started for us around 1997 or 1998, and we ended up buying both computer models. To this day however, because of a very musical upbringing, myself, having been taught skills, I still enjoy playing the piano and other keyboard instruments. I am grateful to have an opportunity to personally create music, experiencing even to myself, although it is very often that others get to hear it. Music is a past time that is capable of uniting individuals, indeed.

Accordions in mid-20th Century Croatia

Nationality: Croatian, American
Age: 79
Residence: San Pedro, California
Primary Language: Croatian
Language: English

Accordions in mid-20th Century Croatia:

ME: When you were younger, what instrument did you play? What did you do for music?

S.H.: Music, I played accordion.

ME: And what age were you when you played accordion?

S.H.: Uh, sixteen, and into twenty.

ME: Uh, did you just do it for entertainment, or did you do it for events like parties?

S.H.: For fun, but played also with groups at family parties.

ME: Thank you.

 

S.H., a Croatian immigrant, explains the sort of music he was playing in Croatia, in the 1950s and 1960s. The accordion is to this day associated with the Mediterranean regions of Southern Europe, and this is a man with a coastal island, Dalmatian background. He immigrated to America in 1970 with his wife, V.H.

African American Oral Traditions

Nationality: American
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Primary Language: English

African American Oral Traditions:

In African-American culture, oral tradition has been passed down in the form of stories and songs. The negro spirituals would not only be songs of prayer and deliverance from sin, but also contained double meanings which other slaves would understand as prayers for literal freedoms from the bondages and miseries of slavery. When slave populations were converted to Christianity, many blacks heavily identified with the Moses and the story of Exodus, believing that they too would eventually be emancipated from servitude by the power of God. Many of these songs are still sung today, one in particular, Wade in the Water is my paternal grandmother’s favorite. According to my father, she would sing it when she bathed me as a baby. My favorite has to be one that most Americans are familiar with: When the Saints Go Marching In. E’ah explained to me how it spoke of Christ’s Second Coming. The “saints marching in” were those Christians who were to be taken up with Jesus as he brought them into heaven. “Lord, how I want to be in that number” was the singer’s expression of hope that they would be among the saints to attain eternal life. I would always be puzzled by a certain verse she would sing: “Oh when the moon shines red with blood”. Later I would come to find out that this refers to the eclipses St. John writes about in the Book of Revelations. I have fond memories of mother and maternal grandmother (Nana) singing hymns such as Leaning on the Everlasting Arm and The Lord is Blessing Me. I like to think foundation of my deep Christian faith is built in part on the words that my grandmother used to sing with such joy: “He woke me us this morning, and started me on my way. The Lord is blessing me right now. Oh! Right now!”

 

J.S. recalls the various oral traditions he is familiar with, with regards to African American culture, as well as his Christian beliefs. He mentions the songs that have a close connection in the hearts of his family members, and himself. I believe that it is a very normal phenomenon to reconcile one’s cultural beliefs with one’s spiritual beliefs, and there are few better ways to accomplish that than with songs.

Fierce Wild Beast

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Austin, Texas
Performance Date: 4/27/15
Primary Language: English

Informant: The interviewee in question here is a 20 year old girl studying business at USC. She hails from Austin, Texas.

Well, my high school was a private Episcopalian school that had been there for around a hundred years. And going to this school you hear a lot about the past and the traditions and a lot of them were still there. And one fun thing we did was that we had to go to chapel every day. And at chapel we’d sing all these hymns. And one of these hymns was called “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” that I guess is just listing out the saints and they’re talking about this one saint who was slain by a fierce wild beast and at our school whenever we were singing this song, you know, usual volume blah blah blah and then you’d reach this part and everyone in the school would yell “FIERCE WILD BEAST” and it’d be this big boom and then we’d all quiet back down to usual volume. And everyone just rolled with it and that was just like one of the things.
Where’d you learn it from?
Well I went to the school from 6th to 12th grade and you would go to chapel. And the first time I went, everyone did it and I picked it up right away.
Why did this stick with you?
Everyone when they listened to the song would anticipate it. Like everyone hated singing the hymns but when that song came on everyone was down and like, you could feel it coming and we’d all come together to yell that part and laugh after. It was like a quirky thing and I have no idea how it started. And at my friend’s school they would do it too and I guess that everyone does it that way.

Analysis:

Private Christian schools can prove conflicted locations. This conflict stems from the conservative values of the generally much older teachers and administrators conflicting with the youthful rebelliousness of the students who attend it. Generally, any outlets for that spirit of youthful rebelliousness are demonized and punished by the religious teachers of the institution, but in this specific case, for whatever reason, it is allowed. Chapel, the most sanctified of any times at these institutions, would usually never allow for outbursts on the scale of the one described here. However, by not directly blaspheming in any way and by causing the congregation to become more engaged in the material being presented, this shout of “FIERCE WILD BEAST” is allowed.